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Treasury chart ‘gave misleading claims on flood defence spending’

Sam Coates,

February 8 2014, 12:01am, The Times

The original chart suggested that the scale of investment was broadly comparable

The Treasury has been left embarrassed by the statistics watchdog over an extraordinary chart boasting of the value of major future investment projects which it says “could leave readers with a false impression”.

Sir Andrew Dilnot, head of the UK Statistics Authority, made the complaint about a chart in the National Infrastructure Plan, published with the Autumn Statement in December, which purported to show the scale of forthcoming investment.

Sir Andrew took the rare step of republishing the chart using a less misleading scale. The original chart published in Treasury documents uses an unusual “logarithmic” scale, which jumps from 1 to 10 to 100, suggesting that the scale of investment in seven areas, from energy to waste, was broadly comparable.